Genesis 14:15

15 There he divided his men and attacked during the night. Kedorlaomer’s army fled, but Abram chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus.

Genesis 14:15 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 14:15

And he divided himself against them, he and his servants by
night
Together with his confederates; and very probably their whole three was divided into four parts, under their four leaders; and this might be done in order to attack the four kings and their soldiers, who might be in four separate bodies; or to fall upon their camp in the four quarters of it, and to make a show of a greater army, thereby to intimidate the enemy: Abram seems to have understood the art of war, and the use of stratagems in it; and, as it might be night before he could come up to them, he took the advantage of that, and fell upon them unawares, when some were asleep in their beds, and others drunk, as Josephus ^F7 relates; and who also says, it was on the fifth night after Abram had knowledge of what had happened at Sodom: and smote them, and pursued them unto Hoba, which [is] on the left
hand of Damascus;
a famous city in Syria; it was in later times the metropolis of that country, ( Isaiah 7:8 ) ; and was most delightfully situated in a vale, (See Gill on Jeremiah 49:25); according to Josephus ^F8 it was built by Uz, the son of Aram and grandson of Shem, and some say

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FOOTNOTES:

F9 by Shem himself, and that it is to this day called Sem in the Saracene language, and lay between Palestine and Coelesyria; on the left hand of this city, or on the north of it, as all the Targums paraphrase it, lay a place called Hoba, and is completed to be eighty miles from Dan, from whence he pursued them hither, after he had discomfited them there.
F7 Antiqu. l. 1. c. 10. sect. 1.
F8 lbid. c. 6. sect. 4.
F9 Baumgarten. Peregrinatio, l. 3. c. 4. p. 111.

Genesis 14:15 In-Context

13 But one of Lot’s men escaped and reported everything to Abram the Hebrew, who was living near the oak grove belonging to Mamre the Amorite. Mamre and his relatives, Eshcol and Aner, were Abram’s allies.

14 When Abram heard that his nephew Lot had been captured, he mobilized the 318 trained men who had been born into his household. Then he pursued Kedorlaomer’s army until he caught up with them at Dan.

15 There he divided his men and attacked during the night. Kedorlaomer’s army fled, but Abram chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus.

16 Abram recovered all the goods that had been taken, and he brought back his nephew Lot with his possessions and all the women and other captives.

17 After Abram returned from his victory over Kedorlaomer and all his allies, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).